Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure (17 page)

Of course, such an ambitious journey could only begin after fresh supplies had been sent from Zanzibar. And the need to wait several months for them would mean outstaying their allotted period of military leave. But in the circumstances the East India Company would almost certainly have permitted them another six months. True they were overspent, but what now seemed within their grasp was nothing less than the solution of the world’s greatest geographical mystery, which had been the ultimate goal of their RGS instructions. After making their way to the unknown lake described by the missionaries, they had been required
‘to proceed northwards towards the probable source of the Bahr el Abiad
[White Nile]
- your next great object to discover’
[my italics].
¹⁶

Once again, the principal reason why Burton refused to go even as far as the Nyanza was his dire state of health.
¹⁷
But since Burton had managed to travel to and from Ujiji on a litter, he could surely have travelled to the lake in like manner? After all, the journey was no longer than the trip to Ujiji from Kazeh and, by declining, Burton was tossing away his last chance to be seen as the joint-discoverer of the Nyanza. Meanwhile, Speke was left ruefully to reflect that without the encumbrance of a sick leader, he could have gone on to Uganda with Musa Mzuri.
¹⁸

Burton and Speke began their journey to the coast on 26 September 1858, with 152 porters recruited by the ever-resourceful Said bin Salim. By flogging them, Burton persuaded the sons of Ramji, now serving him again, to carry loads. As usual, he was being carried by six long-suffering slaves, which he calculated was at a cost thirty times greater per hour than travelling by train in Europe.
¹⁹

Early in October, Speke was struck down by a serious illness. It began with a burning sensation that felt as if he were being branded with a hot iron above the right breast. The pain moved from there to his right lung, thence to his spleen and finally settled in the region of his liver. Bombay called this affliction the ‘little
irons’. It was probably caused by a species of roundworm living in the flesh of the wild animals which Speke had shot and eaten. He had horrible nightmares, in one of which ‘a pack of tigers, leopards and other beasts, harnessed with a network of iron hooks, were dragging him like the rush of a whirlwind over the ground’, seeming to be avenging the hundreds of wild creatures he had shot. At times he suffered violent contractions of the muscles in his limbs; and once he felt ill enough to call for pen and paper so he could write a farewell note to his family. In his delirium, Speke spilled out his resentment of Burton for his supposed accusation of cowardice at Berbera and for his treatment of his diaries. Burton ought not to have been as much surprised by this outpouring as he affected to be. Many African travellers hated the sight of one another when laid low by a variety of African fevers. In fact it was commonplace for explorers to say terrible things, not only when delirious, but when fully conscious too.
²⁰
For instance, one of H. M. Stanley’s fever-stricken white companions tried to shoot him; and on the Zambezi Dr Livingstone came to blows with his own clergyman brother.
²¹
But Burton would later suggest that Speke’s ravings were due to a permanent character change suffered during the journey. Biddable and agreeable at the outset, Speke (so argued Burton) now wished to be the expedition’s leader and brooded over imagined insults. Burton had hitherto represented him as a figure of fun, but now (though not really now, since Burton would write his criticisms many months later) his companion became ‘crooked-minded and cantankerous’, exactly the kind of self-seeking junior officer who would betray his commander.
²²

In order to put all the blame on Speke for the mutual dislike that followed his return from the lake, Burton would make out that the two of them had been good friends until the difference of opinion about the lake wrecked everything. ‘Jack changed his manners to me from this date,’ wrote Burton. ‘His difference of opinion was allowed to alter companionship.’ But Burton’s ‘memories’ of earlier days on their journey, when an admiring Speke had brought his diary to him for correction and the two of them had read Shakespeare together, like master and pupil,
were fanciful. Not only had Speke been alienated by Burton’s treatment of his Somali diaries long before their Tanganyika journey, but also his down-to-earth, masculine literary tastes (he most enjoyed ‘political, statistical or descriptive reading’) made a scenario of reading Shakespeare together wholly implausible. Burton’s most sympathetic biographer, Mary Lovell, has shown him tenderly nursing a sick and increasingly disagreeable Speke, although Speke had actually been nursed by Zawada – one of Said bin Salim’s concubines. Rarely generous with money, Burton was so impressed by Zawada’s gentleness that he ‘liberally rewarded’ her for her devotion.
²³

During their return march to Zanzibar – when Speke was also ill enough to be carried in a litter – a shocking incident occurred. The
kirangozi
taken on at Ujiji had loitered behind for several days because his slave girl had been too footsore to walk at the caravan’s pace. ‘When tired of waiting,’ recorded Burton, ‘he cut off her head for fear lest she should become gratis another man’s property.’ If this brutal murder had been committed in a caravan commanded by Stanley or Baker, the
kirangozi
would have been arrested and handed over to the authorities in Zanzibar or Khartoum. Livingstone would have done the same if he had managed to command the obedience of his other porters. But it seems that Burton did not do anything at all. This is puzzling since earlier he had taken away a much beaten five-year-old slave from Mabruki, and given him to the kindlier Bombay.
²⁴
Both Europeans were still too sick to stand, and Speke was unable to keep a diary at the time. So their physical state may explain the lack of immediate punitive action. But two months later, Burton appeared to have forgotten about the crime entirely. In his report to the Secretary of State for India, he said that because this same man had ‘behaved well in exhorting his followers to remain with us’, he had ‘rewarded the
kirangozi
’.
²⁵

The two explorers finally reached Zanzibar on 4 March 1859 after a futile eleventh-hour diversion to Kilwa, made at Burton’s insistence despite the approach of the rains and there being a cholera epidemic in the area. Burton appears to have been looking
for almost any excuse to delay his return to London, where he would clearly have to pay tribute to Speke’s achievement. Back at the British Consulate Burton confessed that he sank into ‘an utter depression of mind and body’, in which even speaking was too much effort.
²⁶
Without a word to Speke (at this time or later), he penned a letter to Norton Shaw, which must have been extraordinarily painful to write. Enclosing Speke’s map of the Nyanza, Burton wrote:

To this [Speke’s map] I would respectfully draw the attention of the committee as there are grave reasons for believing it to be the source of the principal feeder of the White Nile.
²⁷

Having made this brave admission, Burton was to prove incapable of ever making it again, and he compounded the dishonesty of keeping his true beliefs to himself by embarking on a long and increasingly vindictive campaign to discredit Speke. His justification was that hitting back was the only natural response to Speke’s treachery. Burton’s accusation, which has damned Speke’s reputation ever since, was that he betrayed his erstwhile leader on his return to England – by going to the RGS alone, having promised only to go there with Burton. It was in this underhand way, said Burton, that Speke cut him out and gained for himself sole command of the next Nile expedition. This notion, that Speke behaved in a totally unprincipled way, has been believed, and repeated, by five out of six of Burton’s most recent biographers, and also by the author of Speke’s only biography. But was Speke really ‘a cad’ as one of Burton’s best-known biographers has insisted he was?
²⁸

After sailing together from Zanzibar on 22 March 1859 on the clipper
Dragon of Salem,
the pair disembarked at Aden on 16 April, and stayed with Burton’s old friend, Dr John Steinhaeuser, the civil surgeon of the colony.
²⁹
A dozen years later, Burton would write that Steinhaeuser ‘repeatedly warned me that all was not right’ – implying that his friend suspected that Speke was hatching some mean-minded plan. In fact, in the same paragraph, Burton stated that, while at Aden, he and Speke ‘were, to all appearance, friends’. Whatever the doctor really thought,
he realised that Burton was a very sick man and recommended ‘a lengthened period of rest’. So it came as no surprise to anyone that Burton was not granted a medical certificate to travel, whereas Speke was.
³⁰
They had been three days at Aden when a warship, HMS
Furious,
docked. She was due to sail again the moment she finished coaling, so the two explorers had to decide at once whether to take up the offer of a passage up the Red Sea to Suez. Speke accepted and Burton (presumably not having any choice) declined. And now the crucial words are supposed to have been uttered, which contain Speke’s alleged ‘promise’. They are usually imagined to have been noted down by Burton soon after being spoken.

… the words Jack said to me, and I to him, were as follows:- ‘I shall hurry up, Jack, as soon as I can,’ and the last words Jack ever spoke to me on earth were,
‘Good-bye, old fellow; you may be quite sure I shall not go up to the Royal Geographical Society, until you come to the fore and we appear together. Make your mind quite easy about that.’
[in italics in Volume I of
The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton
compiled by Isabel Burton]
³¹

If all the above words were written at the same time – and there is no reason for thinking they were not – that time must have been after Speke’s death in 1864, because the phrase about their being ‘the last words Jack ever spoke’ is integral. But 1864 was five years on from the parting in 1859, and this makes it seem unlikely that Burton would have remembered the dialogue
verbatim.
Eight years after Speke’s death, Burton would allege, in support of the ‘dialogue’, that Speke wrote to him from Cairo in April 1859 –
en route
to England – ‘reiterating his engagement and urging me to take all the time and rest that broken health required’.
³²
No biographer or archivist has ever seen this letter. This is suspicious, since what appears to be a complete run of Speke’s correspondence with Burton has survived in Burton’s letter books, now in the British Library.
³³
On balance, it seems unlikely that this key letter, which Burton would have been especially eager to preserve, ever existed. To be concerned about such things is not to split hairs. Speke’s supposed ‘betrayal’ of
Burton at this time has been thought to prove that Speke was an unprincipled and devious man, who wronged a more trusting and honourable companion. The truth about whether Speke was indeed to blame for the bitter feud, that would do lasting damage to his reputation as a man and as an explorer, hangs to a large extent on what if anything was actually promised by him. History’s favoured scenario is that Speke promised not to go to the RGS on his return to England unless accompanied by Burton, but then did exactly what he had sworn not to do -and thus secured backing for his own African expedition cutting out his former leader. That is why the evidence for the ‘promise’ deserves close scrutiny.

I found it surprising when reading Speke’s only biography, and the six most recent lives of Burton, not to learn anything about
Speke’s
version of events in Aden. It appeared that he had never written anything on that subject. But, incredibly, he
did
write his own account, which remained generally unknown until some details of it were published in 2006, in a slim volume by a retired American professor.
³⁴
The greatest revelation in Speke’s account is contained in a single sentence concerned with the very point at issue: what Burton said to him at their moment of parting. Casually, after dealing with other seemingly more important matters, Speke mentions that just before his ship sailed: ‘Captain Burton said he would not go to England for many months as he intended to go to Jerusalem.’ Then, after a few sentences devoted to his medical certificate, and his voyage home, Speke adds: ‘A fortnight after my landing in England, Captain Burton unexpectedly arrived …’
³⁵
There could hardly have been a greater contrast between the two versions! So which was true? Burton’s or Speke’s?

The fact that Burton’s famous lines of dialogue did not appear in print until 1893, three years after Burton’s death, must damage their credibility. Burton’s original journals were destroyed by his widow, so cannot be used for comparison. Consequently, the famous dialogue is only to be found in Isabel’s printed biography of her husband – a volume that contains many passages of
dubious dialogue and numerous untruths.
³⁶
In fact her denigration of Speke flags up the possibility that Isabel may herself have been the author (or at least the improver) of the suspect dialogue. Burton himself, however, provided the best reason for doubting the dialogue’s authenticity. He had started his memorable letter to Norton Shaw (the one in which he admitted that Speke’s lake could well be the source of the Nile) with the information that because of his poor health, he would be leaving Aden ‘a short time’ after Speke. He then added: ‘Captain Speke, however, will lay before you maps & observations, & two papers, one a diary of his passage on the Tanganyika lake … and the other his exploration of the Ukerewe or Northern Lake.’
³⁷
So – far from expecting Speke to wait for him to return to England before going to the RGS – Burton had actually expected Speke to do the opposite. But while this seriously undermines the notion that Speke promised not to go to the RGS unless accompanied by his former leader, Burton’s statement to Norton Shaw, that he would be back in London ‘a short time’ after Speke, torpedoes the idea that he had ever had any genuine intention of returning home via Jerusalem. So was Speke as unreliable as Burton, and did he invent the projected trip to the Holy Land?